First Light: Book one of the Torus Saga

by Berg, Michael

“A weapon I suspect. OK, watch this.” Ryan entered a sequence on the holographic dashboard instruments. The rear of their vehicle flashed a blue laser beam directed at their pursuer. At the same time, a similar blue laser erupted from the front of the other vehicle. Almost simultaneously both vehicles came to halt.

  “What’s happening? What is that current we can see?” Jake asked. “And the engines are still going but we are not moving.”

  “Same here as for him. Look.” Agent Eight’s vehicle appeared to be surrounded by the same type of current. “Something my friend on the inside obtained for me. This current in circumfluence stops the mechanics applying drive even though the engines are still running.”

  “OK but we still have a problem. He is getting out.”

  “Just wait, you will feel a jolt in a moment.” He was right; a moment later their vehicle began to move forward again, rapidly accelerating to the speed the engines on each wheel were revving at. “I bet he didn’t count on that.”

  “He’s getting back in. He’s following again.”

  “Yeah the one drawback. My counterpunch means releasing the energy used to hold him stationary.” They had gained a few precious seconds widening the gap between them.

  “He’s gaining again. What are we going to do?” Raynie sounded panicked. ‘Stay calm,’ she thought to herself, ‘as calm as possible.’

  “We cannot outrun him. We will need to outsmart him. Unlikely he will use the blue laser weapon again and he is probably under orders not to destroy us.”

  “We need to split up then. As a single group, we are a single target. He will have to choose.” Jake said.

  “Good idea. Look, the snow is thinning right out.” Ryan then instructed the automatics to take the vehicle to full speed and they accelerated to one hundred and sixty miles per hour in just a few seconds. But the Agent continued to close the gap, now less than two hundred yards behind them.

  “I have an idea. Ryan, take us to the main route between Reno and Carson City. Once we get inside the elevated roadway, the system will slot us in and him as well. If he follows us that will stop him making any ground on us. That way we have a chance to get onto the tube and have some vehicle allotments between him and us. Then we can take an exit suddenly by staying on manual destination. After that we can split up. It will buy us more time and space. We will also need to ditch this vehicle as he will be tracking it.”

  “OK, sounds like a good plan.”

  “I have a friend in Carson who could help us too. He restores vintage vehicles, mostly motorbikes.” Ryan took over manual control and made a sudden right turn. The Agent followed now less than one hundred yards behind. Ryan made several other fast turns but the Agent immediately followed. “This is not working,” he said, “everyone, brace yourselves. He put the vehicle into full reverse, its occupants holding on tight to prevent being injured due to the forces at play. Within a second the vehicle stopped and reversed at a slight angle. Unable to respond in time, the Agent flew past them at one hundred and seventy miles per hour. Ryan then spun the vehicle completely around, took a sharp left turn, then another, and sped on at maximum power.

  This bought them some vital seconds whilst the Agent responded, but not in the way they had anticipated. The Agent engaged his vaporizing weapon again and headed straight across the flat landscape in their direction. He was not angry about the chase - he liked it in fact. Such a chase was rare and he felt power and hatred mix together to give him the skills to keep going. He could see the objective for the dissidents. The elevated roadway was clearly in view illuminated brilliantly in the night. His objective was now to simply follow them onto the tube and apprehend them inside.

  He watched them take the entry ramp from a distance, and he followed. It did not matter if there were vehicles allotted between his and theirs on the automated transit way. Where could they go once inside? There was nowhere as everyone was required to remain in their vehicles. He would just feign an excuse to have the roadway brought to halt. After all, he was an official Agent and he had such resources at his fingertips. Then he would simply walk up to them and restrain them, and hate them as they whimpered from the pain. This would entertain him, and oh the pleasure when he brought them into headquarters and showed that bitch he could do the job.

  His vehicle took the ramp. He could see theirs being allotted as a space became available. He didn’t care when he saw three other vehicles ahead of him as they were allotted spaces between him and the dissidents. A minute later he relaxed a little as the automated ride commenced. Shortly he would stop this thing and he would have them. It did not even matter if some of them escaped, he only need one. He would bleed that person until he had the information he required, and then he would apprehend the rest of them. By obtaining their profile data, their DNA scans and physical genetic profile, he would easily discover who they were by name. He would not use their names though when he interrogated them. He would never be kind enough to anyone to use their name.

  Finally he decided it was time and so issued the command for the roadway to be stopped. Response to his command was instant and the roadway quickly brought all the vehicles to a halt. They had not escaped - he could see their vehicle just ahead. As he opened his door and began to walk towards them, he imagined from his limited imagination, the looks of fear on their faces. He wanted them to fear him and he would make those fears founded in truth. On final approach he drew his laser pulse pistol weapon. The occupants of the vehicle were still clearly visible to him.

  He became angry, very angry. He blasted their vehicle with his pistol. He kept firing and firing. He blasted it with bolt after bolt of laser pulses until it began to become a wreck. He thought he had finally caught them, but he was wrong. When at last he had destroyed the systems generating the hologram of seven adults seated in the vehicle, he stopped. They had escaped.

  Suddenly his Broadcomm sounded, the officer at the other end was requesting recommencement of travel for vehicles on the stationary transit. The Agent was forced to walk back to his own vehicle and punched a holographic command for it to travel once again.

  He took the first available exit and parked just a few minutes later, but this time he did not simply stare into thin air as he done by the lake. This time he went about analyzing the data he had collected during the chase. They had escaped but he could still catch them. He would not stop until he did. The thought of reporting any type of failure again made him sick.

  He decided not to report his status truthfully, instead filing some fake data about the chase and it still continuing. He hated lying but given the circumstance he was right at home with it. At least then he had more time. He would go it alone and he could excuse himself within the machine for this purpose. ‘I am but an extension of the whole machine,’ he thought, this reasoning appeasing his sense of conformity. To go it alone was not strictly conforming to due process, but his hatred, and his anger, was enough to allow this within himself.

  The seven adults walked across the arid landscape near the outskirts of Carson City in the grey early morning light. They had successfully escaped the Agent by exiting their vehicle immediately prior to it being allotted upon the road transit. Ryan had managed to construct a hologram of them all during the chase, and so they slipped through an emergency door, and then took the metal stairs twenty metres to the ground below. They were still in a hurry but did not run. They had seen the Agent’s vehicle enter the tube and speed away. Now, they made their way to see Ryan’s friend.

  “We’ll stay there for a day whilst I work a bit more with John,” he told them. “It will slow that Agent down a bit, but only a bit. My instruments detected a scanner in his vehicle. He will have other data on us, being mostly physical and the like, and use it to track us. We just need to make it as difficult as we can for him, which includes splitting up as we decided to earlier.”

  “When?” Lorraine asked.

  “Tonight.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Trust your
gut feelings on that one.”

  Chapter 26

  John had been mostly wrong about people’s capacity to question the motives of the authorities. People believed the message of security as the reason for mandatory identification ships, with many taking it upon themselves to have the chip injection prior to being told via holographic message. Fear was already in their hearts as news of the nuclear detonations was seen as a direct threat to their daily lives. Holograms had been running twenty-four hours per day since the very first advice, playing up the value of ensuring safety for all. Conversations in cafes, restaurants, at work and at home, served to heighten fear and the race was on to secure identifications. The private companies offering personalization had been a cover. It was the authorities behind them, masquerading as private firms offering choice where choice was the very thing the authorities wanted eliminated. It was not a case of mass hysteria, more a general consensus of the chips being the right thing to do. Nobody wanted their luxuries taken away or even the slightest threat to maintaining their lives of product consumption. It was what they lived for, especially those in the high rise.

  Prejudice was rampant where the trans-human population looked upon those not in the high rise, as either poor in status - not good enough to be trans-human, or as fringe dwellers who would eventually die out. They saw trans-humanism as the way ahead for human evolution. Being part human, part machine both excited and seduced them. Heightened experience and a long life of product consumption was appealing to those who basically knew of nothing else. Long gone were the days where the masses would exit the cities to go on annual holidays, or aspire to own land. The cities serviced all their requirements from being in the outdoors to providing products of comfort.

  Many spent most of their lives using technology in both a work and social sense to meet these requirements or needs. Being needy brought dependency and this was the philosophy of the authorities.

  Language had been re-constructed to fit in with life styles as many words were invented to aptly describe technology or express their limited range of feelings. The art of language was dying, replaced instead with acronyms and abbreviations in reflection of their awareness and of their laziness. It was a laziness stifling enquiry into the meaning of life, a laziness of attention, and a laziness in relations. Culture was retained, with it too being a cover though. The preservation of culture was a ploy, as was the work of people who were employed for this purpose. It was yet another cover designed to provide people with a sense of connection to their histories, yet they were mostly lost.

  Lost were the connections to the Earth, as they pressed headlong into alienation from the source from which the human race was created. With each new device, each new medical technology development, they increasingly built reliance on the trans-human way of life.

  Even a lot of food stuffs were artificial, with the importance of organic food lost years before as people were told the Earth was tainted by the errors of the fossil fuel energy consumption of the twentieth and early twenty first centuries. A lot of foods were grown in addition to the manufacture of proteins, vitamins, fibers, and mineral supplements added to base compounds digestible by humans. Foods grown in natural conditions were still available to buy and in restaurants and cafes, but the price was high and many prioritized wealth over food quality - instead relying on the nano technology within to keep them healthy.

  The concepts of love, of family, and of friends remained, but in essence they were very much guided and smothered through technology. Many saw love as a part of life along side products, work, and status and so strengthened the resolution of the authorities to make them forget that it is the foundation of being and creation. Some even avoided the physical act of love, instead choosing technology for the process of creating offspring. So strong was the influence that many saw the creation of a child as yet another process in life.

  They censored the media, as they owned the media despite the public believing it was independent. Any news of dissent away from trans-human values was portrayed as scornful and non-progressive. The media singled out those who made bold statements or created groups to fight the progress of the human machine. Ridicule was their way and the general public bought every moment of it. Then they would quickly lose interest, instead their focus turning again to technology and what status it could offer.

  Career was the main ideology that mattered. Career brought status and status could afford the best technology and the highest apartments in the high rise at the center of many cities around the globe. Life on the top floors formed the aspirations for many and so they lived their lives trying to climb, to live, yet utterly they were at the will of the authorities. They were bound in most part to outsourcing their happiness.

  Most were also in bondage to a common plight, the need for entertainment. An entertained mind is a consumed mind mostly devoid of creative free will. A mind free of creativity is also a conforming mind, and so the authorities provided the entertainment, as average and lacking in artistic values as it was. Their devices were a distraction whilst being a provider. Equipped with the latest technology, a person could access entertainment whenever they chose and from where they thought was anywhere in the world. Little did they realize that diversity was also a controlling mechanism of the authorities, and a method of pretence to convince the public the Earth was a place of individuals in mind and in expression.

  Billions of hearts beat giving life, yet those billions of hearts were also lacking in life. People were told to listen to their mind and to be practical, as the heart was merely an organ and the authorities could control its health through technology. Gradually most people of Earth were being deactivated, declining in real intellect as they dug deeper and deeper into false projections of life provided so ardently by the authorities. Only those who still remained in far-flung places away from the imposing nature of technological development, or those who actively chose to reject technology other than for some uses, bore a sense of remembering. They remembered and held a sense of the heart and mind connection to the Earth when a true sense of being was being forgotten, but there numbers were few and continued to dwindle.

  **********

  Life on the Moon was arduous for some irrespective of how long it was for or what tasks they were required to perform. At first, both Lyle and Jenna found this to be the way as they struggled inside confined rooms, airlocks and space suits. It was during their third Earth day at Luna One when they confronted this within themselves. Without any solid advice on where they would go or precisely what they would do, they were both feeling this angst. So far they had been assigned to acclimatizing tasks – jobs to help them get used to working in such an environment.

  “I don’t get it,” Jenna said on the third night as they ate dinner together. “I have never been in a position such as this. Normally I am amongst the first to know details of any project, mission, or assignment, yet this time, just a vague notion to analyse data for the new mining machinery.”

  “Hmm…I feel for you. At least my job contains ambiguity by nature, often requiring my own investigations and research to define its purpose.”

  “And…nobody really knows me. I am used to being a major player, even directing some projects, yet this time all I have is the knowledge of what type of technology is being tested. Add all this feeling with adapting to the confines of this base, and I am getting a little headstrong. I want to do something about it but for the life of me cannot even come to any conclusion.”

  “Maybe we could talk about our trip and some of the infor…”

  “Too risky, there is surveillance everywhere.” They finished their meal and decided to spend the evening at the data library and do some reading. On their way to the library they noticed a small team of operations personnel holding a casual meeting in one of the lounges they passed. Jenna was confused, as the small team appeared as if they were not a mining operations team, which was mostly what Luna One was built to house. She thought she recognized one of them and was
about to say something, when a feeling inside made her hold back.

  She picked up her pace a little to catch up with Lyle who had made a few yards on her when she had paused. “Something is going on here. I think I recognize someone from the group we just passed in the lounge.”

  “What do you mean, something going on. I would have thought there would be scientists here for the mining gear tests.”

  “There are, I saw them earlier. The person I saw is someone I met from central system weapons division only a few months ago. Apparently back then, the weapons division was assigned to scientific research study of the systems used for the mining gear. We were told it was purely as an information sharing exercise. The weird thing is that at the end of the meeting, we were then told there would be nothing else the weapons people needed and it was true, they had everything we had.”

  “Perhaps they just want to see the mining…”

  “Um no, sorry to cut you off. There are strict policies in place on issues like that. Once a team is assigned, they are assigned purely for the length of the assignment. Another assignment would take months to organize as the logistics are huge and the levels of authorization are complicated. I directed the summary meeting with them, and I am absolutely certain all the information exchange was completed. They even advised the same from their perspective.”

  “Do you think they are going to deploy weapons on the Moon? There are none so far and with the trouble coming from the detonations and this ID chip suddenly coming in, maybe they think it is time to change.”

  “I can understand your reasoning and it sounds legitimate, but I have a feeling there is something else. Why am I not even being briefed about their presence? I have a lot of professional questions.”

  “And a particular feeling. Is it a gut feeling?”

  “It sure is!” By now they had reached the data library and fell silent as they noticed a few others already inside. When they were just about to enter, Jenna hesitated, “Hey, let’s go for a walk instead. We can take a few of those connecting tubes and at least we can cover some distance. I am getting a bit sick of sitting around a lot.”